Seth Shostak's a pretty nice guy, and probably didn't deserve to be tackled in
a dark alley by an elite force of Pigdog journalists. But we had questions—questions
about extraterrestrials—and we'd heard Seth is the Man To Ask.
After all, he's a SETI astronomer. For decades he's been listening to the
things the stars say. Get him liquored up at a party and he'll start doing
impressions of quasars.

Tell us about the aliens, we said. We want the truth.

Ow, he said. Get off me. I'll tell you what I know.

But my tape of the interview starts only with a mysterious white noise, and
when the voices finally come through, Seth is saying that there are things he
can't talk about...